


The Dose Makes The Poison

by Chuthulhu (Mangaluva)



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: AU to like the last ten minutes of season 1 of Korra, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bloodbending (Avatar), Gen, some dialogue lifted from "The Puppetmaster"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 15:48:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23300197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mangaluva/pseuds/Chuthulhu
Summary: There's more than one way to heal an Avatar
Relationships: Aang/Katara (Avatar), Katara & Korra (Avatar)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 111





	The Dose Makes The Poison

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote about Katara bloodbending in "Hope Is A Mistake" and remembered "oh yeah, she can do that"
> 
> "...if Amon blocked Korra's bending using bloodbending, wouldn't bloodbending be able to reverse it?"
> 
> So instead of an Aang Ex Machina, I present this alternative to the end of Book 1.

Korra probably wasn’t lying in Katara’s healing water for more than a couple of minutes, but they felt like a lifetime.

_Will I feel it, when I get my bending back? What will it feel like? Will I know? What if I don__’t__ get my bending back? What if I _can’t_ get my bending back? What kind of Avatar can only bend _one_ element?!_

“Breathe, Korra,” Katara said gently, her hands ghosting over Korra’s face as she pushed and pulled healing energy through the water. “Can you tell me anything about _how_ you lost your bending? Do you know what Amon did to your energy?”

“Oh, yeah! Ugh, I can’t _believe_ I didn’t tell you already,” Korra groaned, grinding the heels of her hands into her eyes. “He’s a bloodbender. He used bloodbending to take away my bending, but I don’t know how.” Katara’s hands stilled, and Korra heard her gasp sharply. “I know! His father was called Yakone—I saw his trial in Aang’s memories. That was your brother Sokka at the head of the city council at the time, right?”

“Yes, it was,” Katara said quietly. “I wasn’t there at Yakone’s trial, but I heard about it later from my brother and Aang. Aang took Yakone’s bending away by bending his energy. It’s a style of bending that Aang discovered himself, and he’s the only one to have ever performed it. You’re saying that Amon did it by bending your _blood?__”_

“He must’ve gotten the idea from what Aang did to his father,” Korra realized. “Yakone trained Amon—well, Noatak—and his brother Tarrlok to use bloodbending by making them hurt animals, then each other… that’s why he thought all bending’s evil!”

“Well, that might be a _bit_ of a leap… did you see what he did when he bloodbent you, Korra?” Katara gestured up and down herself. “Did he reach for a particular part of your body?”

“He just touched my head… right here.” Korra reached up to tap the spot on her forehead that Amon had touched, shuddering at the memory of his hands on her, how _helpless_ she’d been, the sight of Mako on the floor and knowing she _couldn__’t save him_—

“Here?” Katara rested one of her soft, wrinkled old hands over Korra’s, gently cutting off the bad memories. “Korra, do you trust me?”

“Of course,” Korra said, staring in confusion at her waterbending master. She didn’t have any grandparents—her mother’s died when Korra was young, and she assumed that her father’s had died before she was born, because they were never mentioned—so Katara was like a grandmother to her. While some of her White Lotus masters didn’t spend much time at the compound unless they were training her, Katara had always been there, happy to tell Korra a story or play with her or sneak her out to go penguin sledding.

Maybe the feeling was older than that. She’d trusted Master Katara the moment they’d met, back when she’d first been presented to the White Lotus as the Avatar. She’d known the old master since her last life, after all, so she’d literally trusted Katara since before she was born.

“If Amon did this to you with bloodbending, then I might have an idea for something to do about it,” Katara said, giving Korra a wan smile, “but I don’t think I should try it until the full moon, when my waterbending is stronger. There’s one in three days. Can you wait until then?”

“What else have I got?” Korra said, trying to smile back.

~B~B~B~

Kya loved traveling, always had, ever since she’d taken off with nothing but a pack and a canoe when she was seventeen in a fit of jealousy that Dad had taken Tenzin on an Avatar trip but not Kya or Bumi, _again_. With the retrospect of decades, and hearing from her mother and uncle about all the international diplomatic problems that had started cropping up in the wake of Dad’s death, Kya knew it was less that Dad only wanted to spend time with Tenzin and more that he always had work to do and was trying to fit training the world’s only other airbender into any spare second. It didn’t keep her from missing her dad as a kid, though, or wishing she could travel the world just like him. So she did, and she found out that she _loved_ it.

What she _didn__’t_ love was being stuck in a cruise ship for two weeks, not able to take any shore visits or even really relax since her water healing was needed to contain an outbreak of pentapox. By the time everybody was healthy and they were allowed to go ashore, she was ready to just go home and collapse in her bed.

She wasn’t expecting to see her little brother tucking his daughters into _her bed_. “Tenzin! Back again already?” she said, dropping her bag and accepting a flurry of airbending-boosted hugs from her nieces and nephew. “Hey, kids!”

“Aunt Kya! It’s terrible!” Ikki cried. “We got kidnapped by bad guys and they were gonna take our bending but Korra saved us but the bad guy took _her_ bending so we came to see Gran-Gran but she can’t heal Korra!”

“_Yet_,” Jinora insisted. “Gran-Gran said she’s going to try again on the full moon, when her waterbending’s a lot stronger!”

“Whoa, whoa—somebody tried to take your bending away?!” Kya gasped, looking up at how very, very tired Tenzin looked. Just because she was sometimes jealous of the attention that Tenzin got for being an airbender didn’t mean she wanted him to _lose_ it. “Are you all okay?!”

“We’re fine, Kya,” Tenzin said, picking up Meelo and chivvying his daughters back to bed. “Korra stopped Amon from finishing what Sozin started… but at the cost of her firebending, waterbending and earthbending. Come on, kids, you can tell your auntie about it tomorrow…”

“Tui and La—are you okay, Pe—oh!” Kya just about flew across the room to sit next to Pema, who was cradling an orange-wrapped little bundle. “Oh, you had the baby! When? How are you doing, Pema?”

“The day before the Equalists kidnapped us,” Pema said, clutching the baby tightly, a stubborn anger in her eyes that belied her Earth Kingdom heritage no matter how much orange and yellow she wore. She exhaled with a sense of forcing herself to relax, then held the baby out to Kya. “His name’s Rohan. Rohan, this is your auntie Kya. Say hi!”

“Oh, he got your eyes! Hello, Rohan,” Kya cooed, poking the baby’s chubby little cheeks with a finger until he giggled. “Right before you got kidnapped—seriously, Pema, are you okay?”

“Katara checked me out when we got in here the other day,” Pema insisted, though she still looked tired. “I’ll be fine.”

“Let me look you over, just in case,” Kya offered, handing Rohan back and heading for the bathroom. “I’ll draw you a bath to rest in. I know he’s your fourth, but some water healing will do you both good.”

“Thanks, Kya,” Pema sighed. “Katara did offer to come back down from the compound for a few sessions, but I don’t want her going back and forth so much… Korra and Lin need her help.”

“Lin’s here too?” Kya asked, pausing in the bathroom door to give Tenzin an eyebrow. “Anything _else_ I need to know?”

“Lin lost her bending,” Tenzin said sadly. “She was trying to protect us.”

Kya bit back a whole range of responses, aware of the young children in the room, and finally settled on, “are you trying to outdo _Bumi__’s_ stories?!”

~B~B~B~

By the time the full moon rose, Korra was about ready to crawl out of her skin. She’d spent three days focusing on practicing airbending and not how she’d failed, how close she’d come to failing everyone else, to losing the last airbenders, to losing _Mako_—

She was avoiding Mako, too. He wanted to talk to her about something, and she wasn’t sure she was ready for it. They’d really _connected_ when fighting Amon together, but worrying about whether or not Mako liked her as much as she liked him just… didn’t seem to matter right now. Maybe he wanted to tell her that he loved her, or maybe he wanted to tell her that he just didn’t feel the same, and either way it felt like more than she could handle on top of losing three-fourths of herself and not knowing if she would ever get them back.

“Mom, are you sure I can’t help?” Kya said as she walked out into the yard with her mother. “I’m almost as good a healer as you are—”

“Kya, you’re every bit as good as I am, but that isn’t the problem,” Katara insisted, patting her daughter’s arm. “I just… need to try something, and I’m not sure if it will work. I’m glad you’re here in case things go wrong—”

“It’d help if you’d at least _tell_ me what you’re trying! You’re worrying me, Mom!”

“I’m sorry, dear,” Katara said, patting Kya’s arm again, “but I can’t tell you yet. You’ll understand why later. Korra? Are you ready?”

“I’ve been ready for three days,” Korra said, pulling off her training gear and dropping it in the snow as she ran back towards the compound. “Don’t worry, Kya. I trust Master Katara knows what she’s doing. This’ll work.”

_It has to. I don_ _’t know what I’ll do if it doesn’t._

As she lay back in the water of the healing pool, Korra tried to focus on breathing steadily. _It__’ll be okay. I trust Master Katara. It’ll be okay._

“Now, you said Amon touched you here?” Katara asked, putting a hand to Korra’s forehead.

Korra reached up to adjust the healer’s hand slightly. “It was there.” She still felt a shiver when she touched that spot, remembering Amon’s hands on her.

“Okay.” Katara took a deep breath. “Now, Korra, I need you to trust me. Don’t move, no matter what. This may feel strange, but please don’t be concerned. If you feel pain, you must tell me immediately, okay?”

“Okay,” Korra said, restraining the urge to nod. “No movement. Got it.”

“I need you to keep talking, though,” Katara said, raising her other hand. “I suspect that he did something in your brain, and healing _that_ is delicate work. Hmmm… can you tell me a story? Any story at all, so long as you keep talking for a while.”

“Really? Okay… ummm… y’know, all I can think of right now is that ghost story _you_ told me, Master Katara,” Korra said, smiling a little at the memory of that winter night that Master Katara had spent _scaring Korra out of her skin _with stories about ghost girls and angry spirit bears and Koh the Face-Stealer. “The one about Nini?” Katara nodded and smiled, gesturing for Korra to talk. “You said it happened to your mother…”

Once Korra got into the flow of the story, Katara closed her eyes, keeping one hand on Korra’s forehead and slowly moving the other through the air. It… looked unpleasantly like the movements Amon made when he took people’s bending, but she reminded herself that she trusted Katara and didn’t move. She didn’t feel anything, at first, and focusing on telling the story helped her feel a little calmer—

_The old woman rose to her hands and knees with a snarl. It wasn_ _’t Master Katara, and they were in a forest, not the healing room._

_“We know what you’ve been doing, Hama!”_

_Korra felt her own mouth moving, saying, _ _“give up, you’re outnumbered!” but it didn’t sound like her own voice. _

_“No,” the old woman said with an awful smirk, “you’ve outnumbered _yourselves!”

_The old lady lifted her hands. Korra couldn__’t feel her body, but she could see her own black-clad feet lifting off the ground, her body—but that wasn’t _her_ body, it looked wrong—contorting oddly. Then she was flying through the air, towards a young girl in red clothes, who narrowly avoided both Korra and a boy in red, before pulling water out of apparently nowhere and attacking the old lady with it. _

_“Katara, look out!” the boy in red yelled as he drew his sword with odd, jerky movements._

Katara?_ Korra realized, watching the girl fend the boy off and knock him down with a blast of water. _Is that… _Master_ Katara, back when she was young?

_“This feels weird!” Korra’s mouth said as her body attacked Katara, who didn’t hesitate to ice Korra to a tree, as well._

_“I’m sorry, Aang!” Katara shouted, running past._

_“It’s OK,” Korra said. _Aang… these must be Aang’s memories! The old lady—she’s a bloodbender! _Though frozen, she could see as the boy with the sword awkwardly attacked Katara again, distress and horror writ large over his face, until Katara iced him to a tree too. _Wait, I think I know that guy, I’ve seen him in Aang’s memories before—he’s Katara’s brother, Sokka! I can’t believe this bloodbender made him and Aang _attack_ Katara… no wonder she looked so upset when I said Amon was a bloodbender!

“_Don__’t hurt your friends, Katara,” the old woman cackled, “and don’t let them hurt _each other.”

_Then Aang__’s body was moving again, Korra pulled along with it, and she could see Sokka flying towards her, point-first, he was going to _impale_ Aang—_

_“_NO!”

_The sword stopped so close to Aang_ _’s stomach that Korra could see the tip of it snag on Aang’s shirt, then both boys collapsed to the ground. She could see Aang’s hands, pale with blue arrows on the back, flex inquisitively a couple of times, and then he looked up._

_The old woman was shaking, a horrified expression on her face. Katara looked just as horrified, but she kept her hands out, moving them slowly forwards and down. _

_As she did, the old lady fell shakily to her knees, as if forced. As if her body was outside of her control._

How is she… no…

_Others came, people who put chains on the old woman and dragged her away, but before she was gone, the old woman looked back and laughed._

_“My work is done,” she said with an awful smile. “Congratulations, Katara. You’re a _bloodbender_.__”_

_Katara fell to her knees, sobbing—_

Korra opened her eyes, and Katara hand a hand over her mouth, tears pouring down her cheeks.

“Master… Katara?” Korra managed, slumping down in the water. “What… what did you…?”

“How do you feel, Korra?” Katara asked. Her voice was thick and a little hoarse, like she’d been crying for a while.

“How do I…?” Korra reached out a hand, hovering over the surface of the healing water. _Am I healed? What if I__’m not? What if I can’t—_

“Go on, Korra,” Katara encouraged her. Korra gritted her teeth, steeled herself, and flicked her hand.

The water in the healing pool rose up in a stream that followed her gesture and splashed into the wall.

“I—I did it!” Korra jumped to her feet, punching a small, controlled fireblast at the stone floor, then pulled a chunk out of one of the stones and flipped it through the air. “I can _bend_! You _did_ it!”

“Thank goodness,” Katara sighed, putting a hand over her heart. “I’m happy for you, Korra, dear, but I’d prefer it if you didn’t destroy my healing room—”

“Whoops.” She lowered the chunk of stone back into the hole it had come from, though it didn’t quite seem to fit anymore. “I-I had another vision, one of Aang’s memories, it was…” She stared at her old master. Something had clicked together in her mind, but she wasn’t sure if it was something good or not. “Master Katara? Are you… a bloodbender?”

Katara inhaled sharply, then looked down, eyes heavy and sad. “You saw Hama,” she said quietly.

“The old lady… yeah.” The memory of Hama’s horrible, broken smile when she used bloodbending was going to be the stuff of a few nightmares, Korra just _knew_ it. _Man, am I glad Master Katara never told me _that_ story when I was a kid._ “Did you just use _bloodbending_ on me?”

“If Amon did something to you with bloodbending that blocked your chi, it stood to reason that perhaps I could use bloodbending to undo it, too,” Katara said, holding out her hands. “I… I wish I could say that what you saw, the fight against Hama, was the last time I ever used bloodbending, but it wasn’t. I haven’t used it since the war, however, so I wasn’t sure if it would work… and I wasn’t sure if you would agree to letting me try it if you knew that was what I meant to do. I’m sorry, Korra.”

“No… don’t,” Korra said, taking one of Katara’s hands. “Master Katara… you just gave me back my bending. That’s not evil! You _healed_ me!”

“There are many who would say that bloodbending is inherently evil,” Katara pointed out.

“Yeah, but I bet during the Hundred Years’ War, there were plenty of people who thought all firebending was evil, right?” Korra exclaimed, tightening her grip on Katara’s hand. “Look, a lot of people _have_ used bloodbending for evil, but if anybody has a problem with you using it to heal, then they’re gonna have to go through _me_ first!”

Katara chuckled, wiping another tear from her eye. “You know… during the war, I probably would’ve been first in line to tell you that all firebenders are evil,” she said. “Goodness, what it took poor Zuko to get me past that…” She squeezed Korra’s hand back. “I’m sure you can understand why I haven’t spoken of this before, though. Including you, there are only three living people who know that I can bloodbend.”

“I won’t tell anybody, if that’s what you want,” Korra promised. “But… do you think you’ve got it in you to heal Bei Fong, too, while it’s still the full moon?”

“Whatever you want to tell people is fine by me, Korra,” Katara assured her, “and of course I’ll heal Lin. It should be easier, this time. Amon twisted your blood in certain places, and I know where to find them now. I just…” She leaned forwards, hugging Korra tightly. “I’m so happy you’re alright, Korra.”

Korra hugged her back, burying her face in Katara’s shoulder. “Master Katara? When I woke up… why were you crying? It doesn’t hurt you, does it? Bloodbending?”

“Not at all, I promise.” Katara leaned back, putting her hands on Korra’s shoulders and giving her a watery smile. “While you were in Aang’s memories… Aang came here.”

“He did?” Korra gasped. “Did you get to _talk_ to him? That’s amazing! What did you talk about?”

“Now, now, Korra… A lady has to have _some_ things for herself,” Katara said with a little wink. “He’s proud of you, though. As you become a greater Avatar, I’m sure he’ll get the chance to tell you himself.”

“I’ll keep working hard on my spiritual training,” Korra promised. _Not just memories__… one day, I’ll be able to actually speak to Aang myself. “_You know,” she said as she stood up, helping Katara to his feet, “you were really cute when you were a teenager! No wonder Aang fell in love at first sight!”

Katara burst out laughing. “Oh, go show everyone your bending,” she chuckled, shoving Korra out of the bathroom door.

Korra stepped out into a sea of tense faces—her parents, Mako, Bolin, Asami, Lin, Kya, Tenzin, Pema, the children…

All the people who were here for her, bending or no bending. All the people who believed in the Avatar.

“Did it work?” Kya asked tentatively.

Korra grinned, raising her hands and igniting fire in them. “The Avatar is _back_,” she announced, and barely managed to extinguish the flames in time before Bolin and the kids piled on her excitedly.

“It really worked!” Bei Fong exclaimed, leaping to her feet and looking from Korra to Katara. “How? I thought you said the healing water didn’t work!”

“Well…” Korra looked uncertainly to Katara, who gave her a reassuring smile.

“I can explain what I did before healing you too, if you’d like, Lin,” she offered, “but you might want to sit down first…”

**Author's Note:**

> Not that it wasn't nice to see Aang all grown up and Avatar spirit-y and all, but him showing up when Korra isn't in touch with her spirituality and wasn't even trying WAS a bit out of nowhere, seeing how much meditation it took Aang to get the hang of speaking to his own past lives. I like thinking about Katara and Korra bonding, anyway, and I liked all of the scenes of Katara helping Korra recover in Book 4.
> 
> We only ever see bloodbending get used to control/torture people in the series, but if it can be used delicately enough to do something to a person's brain that blocks their bending, couldn't it have LOADS of uses in the medical field if caught and trained properly early on? I bet a bloodbender could make an excellent trauma surgeon. Somebody's bleeding out and they can just MAKE the blood flow normally. It's fun to speculate on how normal bending could be used in fucked up ways but the reverse is true too, y'know?


End file.
